What’s so great about food trucks? (And other American food trends)

The food media continues to treat [food trucks] as a new form of cuisine and some sort of breakthrough invention when they are nothing more than a way to deliver food to consumers, akin to the ‘invention’ of home delivery, takeout containers or the drive through. When grouped together in lots, as is the case in Austin and Portland, food trucks become an outdoor version of a longstanding American culinary tradition – the shopping mall food court, and nothing more. Food-wise, there is nothing new about trucks, which serve foods you can already get in countless restaurants, albeit it with much more limited menus.

Olmsted finds food trucks to be one of the eight worst American food trends. Forbes has the other 7.